Sepia and Technicolor
by okh-eshivar
Summary: A collection of stories and themes involving Mystique and Irene's experiences together, pre X-Men and Brotherhood. All will be set between 1910 and 1940, so Irene will be on the younger side. R&R please ;
1. Chapter 1

_**1911**_

The air was always crisp here at this time of day; like an empire apple, smooth and ripe, it smelt of sweetness and tasted of cool water and summer grass. A gentle breeze rolled through the orchard and splashed against the tips of every leaf, awakening a melody of tiny sounds that rose and fell to an erratic rhythm. A tempestuous sea of noise. Raven listened with a quiet intent, eyes drawn shut and cigarette caressed timidly between ivory-white teeth. The smoke twirled about in a delicate choreography for a moment, then vanished on the wind of the afternoon. The ground beneath her back was soft, alive with the textures of lemongrass and moss, and the sun was as sweet as the air, blanketing her dark blue skin in an envelope of warmth. The summer in Austria had been akin to no other the woman had experienced; the nostalgia was thick and ranged from all corners of the vast landscape, from the dense forests to the bustle of everyday life in the city. This was her home and, as the cliché went, there was no place like it.

A presence acquainted itself with a light touch to her shoulder, a feather-soft brush of a hand. She hummed inquiring through her lips and did not open her eyes, waiting instead for a word to be spoken from her visitor. The response instead was a pull at the cigarette, yanking it upwards and away from the lax grip of her teeth. At this action the shapeshifter moaned in distress and revealed one tawny eye. Her gaze was met by that of a young blind girl, who with a knowing smile snapped her wrist and flicked the cigarette into the tall grass.

"Irene, that was my last one," Raven groaned, looking up into the girl's clouded eyes. She knew that although Irene's abilities left her blind, she could still 'see' through her mind's eye. The 20 year old was more than capable of sight, if not on a visual scale than on a psychic one.

"Good. Now stay away from them. " A chuckle, as soft as the moss she lay on. The brown haired girl knelt next to her. "They're going to be discovered as the leading cause of cancer related death in a few decades."

"If you say so." The changer had learned over the last year that she had known the precognitive to trust her judgment, no matter how ridiculous or trivial her predictions seemed.

"You shouldn't lay out in the sun so often either. It can cause skin cancer."

Raven sighed and sat up. "Seems like the only things that are worth doing are the ones that might kill you."

A frown. "You sound unhappy."

"Well, it's disappointing."

"That's not it. There is something else bothering you."

"You don't already know?"

A pause. "No."

"Liar."

"No, I swear I don't. Honest." She placed a ginger hand over her breast. "Cross my heart."

The woman let another sigh run through her teeth, disturbing strands of crimson hair that had escaped from her loose bun. A long while passed before she spoke again, the cogs of her mind struggling to put the words together into an understandable explanation. She settled for a vague metaphor instead.

"There are too many missing pieces."

The girl sat patiently, waiting for her to continue.

"What we're doing, it's like trying to smash a mirror in order to change the reflection. Once it's broken, it's nearly impossible to put back together. There are too many variables, too many pieces that are smashed beyond repair." Another pause. "And even once you manage to recreate the mirror, it's still the same reflection. Just warped and distorted, covered with gaping holes and blood smears."

The metamorph looked up and into the eyes of her companion, concern lit in tawny orbs. "Irene, how can we be sure that even after all of our efforts the future in your visions isn't just going to happen anyway? What if we're trying to change something that simply cannot be changed?"

"The future is but a reflection of the past. Things will appear there only if we allow them to exist _here_. We aren't trying to smash the mirror itself per say, but rather manipulate the image within it."

Raven squinted at her suspiciously, a very slight pout forming on her lips.

"What?"

"That was a pretty quick response. You're trying to tell me you didn't rehearse that little bit beforehand?"

Irene put her hands up defensively and frowned. "I promised, didn't I?"

"So it just happened to roll off your tongue as perfectly as it did?"

"I understand you, Raven. I know how to answer your questions because I was at one point asking myself those very same things. They are conclusions I formulated to cure my own self-doubt."

The shifter studied the girl skeptically, running her eyes from her elegant, bare feet to her wavy auburn locks. The permanent furrow between her eyebrows, the slight, subtle smile that danced atop her perfect lips, the confidence that lingers always on her shoulders and in her clouded eyes. The straight and gentle curve of her back and the strength of her voice told a world of pure truth in a place that could only lie maliciously.

"…I trust you."

Irene's features softened in a subtle relief. "Thank you, my friend. It has been far too long since I last heard that."

It was difficult, this life. In the serenity of such a rare peace, everything seemed simpler, kinder; the humans were not biting at their heels, filling their breath with the smog of hate and moral decay. In this fleeting moment—far too brief to contemplate—the world was quiet. Not silent, not pure, not remotely sympathetic nor any more humane, but quiet. Hopeful, perhaps.

For the first time in far too long, the sky shone a brilliant blue and the sun, in all of its life giving beauty, offered a small comfort.

In the past, Raven had learned to hate these moments. They, like a fleeting summer's dream, brought with them not only the lightness of tranquility but the aftermath of something terrible. A dreadful thing, that consumed the sun and devoured the light that now warmed them so; sorrowful and greedy, it stole them back into a world that condemned and detested them. Waking from a blissful mare into a place of hellish blaze; no matter how real those dreams seemed, you always awoke the same person, in the same world surrounded by the same ugly people, and in this she could find nothing but sadness and anger. Hate was a debilitating disease that infected and festered and multiplied; she did not wish to become any more tainted than she was.

And she most certainly did not wish to condemn Irene to the same fate. She already possessed far too little innocence as it was, plagued with the poison of tomorrow's nightmare.

A cold wind swept over the field, pulling angry clouds over their heads and forcing the grasses to bow in a wave unison. In the distance, a dense fog tumbled clumsily over the horizon and the smell of the coming rains filled the senses, static charging the atmosphere with teasing electricity. Irene closed her eyes and put her nose upwind.

"A storm is coming soon. We should head back."

"Yes…"

Raven stretched languidly upwards with an arch of her spine. Several of the vertebrae popped rhythmically in response. She rose to her feet in one fluid motion and outstretched a hand to Irene, pulling her up gently and snatching the silver cane from its resting place in the weed. The blind girl took it graciously.

And with that, the two mutants left that sacred time and made their way back into a grim reality. The shifter's skin lightened to a warm Caucasian and her sharp tawny eyes drained, swirling with a vivid green. Crimson hair followed suit and reformed to a deep ebony to match the neat tuxedo she wore. She brushed a spot of dirt from her fedora and placed it atop her head, the hood casting a shrouding shadow over her eyes.

Irene hooked her arm into the woman's pocketed one and smiled sadly.

A/N: Reviews are deeply and sincerely appreciated 3 More to come…


	2. Death and Fire

_**A/N: **_**16****th**** birthday's coming up. Wish me luck 3 Also, I'd like to extend my gratitude to BlueFire13 for her reviews. Thanks so much!**

_**1912**_

Run. Run! _**Faster!**_

Tears of crimson blood rolled from the fresh wound of the side of the shifter's face, leaving trails of metallic fluid across her cheek and flitting from her jawbone in minute drops. Her breath was coming in sharp, jagged gasps now, threatened by the force of her hammering chest to simply stop abruptly and suffocate her. A branch clings to her ankle as she bounds over it, bringing the ground up to meet her.

Get up. _**Get up and run, you weak little girl! **_

She struggles with the limb, the blaze of fire and gunpowder rich in the distance. They lit the house. _**GET UP AND RUN!**_

Behind her, the incessant roar of rifles and hunting dogs. _**Escape.**_

_The house Get to the house Fire Fire is death Fire is death Get to the fire_

A bullet kisses the side of her leg, and she hardly notices. She rises, falls, rises again and takes flight deeper into the dark abyss with nothing but the flaming structure in the distance to guide her.

_**IRENE!**_

A single dog bounds from the advancing pack, spots its fleeing prey and darts ahead, jaws open and serrated teeth glistening with saliva and murderous intent.

Raven glances behind her at the sound of a vicious growl and the crackling of fallen leaves.

Too late, too soon. _Why did you look?_

The canine takes advantage of the opening and leaps, grappling onto her wrist with a thousand needles dripping with morphine. The smell of fresh blood pours into the ashen air. The shifter was far too proud to scream, but the sound threatened her ragged throat nonetheless.

Her right arm thins and graphs itself into a saber, quick and precise, and as she brings it down into the dog's skull she could swear its eyes met hers. The bone splits open like a cracked coconut and pours warm, sticky fluid onto her side. She hated hurting animals, but once again the humans forced her hand.

It gives the saddest yelp she had ever heard and falls away like the last dying leaf in fall, limp and nearly lifeless. It tries to scamper off, but can only whine in pain and drag its bleeding, cracked head into the darkness to die. She wants to stop, to turn around and end the pour creature's agony but continued her tired run instead, the close flame driving her forward.

Seventeen stumbling, frantic paces and the fiery ball of angry light and heat was upon her, roaring, thrashing about in all its brilliance. It was some ravenous beast, made to kill and consume them with teeth of rumble and debris and hellfire; and of course, its mother, its maker, and its god was the wrathful hand of the human.

A burn ate a fraying hole through the skin of Raven's exposed thigh as a support beam collapses, sending tinder and half consumed wood into a shower of heat. She paused for none short of a single moment, ignoring the growl of warning the beast spat in her direction. The thought of Irene's smoldering corpse passes her mind's eye; it was more than enough to force the metamorph into the flames.

The doorway is the gate of hell, hot and insatiable. Her heart throbs and trips as she bounds through it, like a performing horse in a circus act jumps through a hoop of fire. Tongues of ash and molten saliva lick at her body from every direction.

The intensity is overwhelming and sucks the breath from her lungs.

_Come on come on forward faster faster she's here She's dying Can't let her die _

A scream—Upstairs. Smoke billows beneath her pounding footsteps. A single word echoes against her exhausted lungs. "IRENE!" -grasping at the splintering staircase with frantic arms, ducking beneath the wall of engulfing smoke—"IRENE!" A torch of scalding light smashes the eight steps behind her; she hears the wounded maple slates cry out in agony and fall away, but the shifter does not look back. A flashback to the blind – _can she see the flames Jesus Christ too hot too much smoke __**GET OUT OF THE HOUSE**__!-_ girl's smiling face, gentle and promising, pushes her at last to the smoldering doorway to the room they shared. "IRENE!"

A smothered cry from inside –her smooth voice ragged with panic-"_**Raven!**_"

She shoves the door from melted hinges, receiving charred burns against both of her forearms. She will not feel them until much later.

An overwhelming wave of smoke and fiery ash attacks her as the compressed air from inside escapes. _Hot—_

She peels her eyes open and peers through her arms, searching. _Got to get out—_

There is a girl laying on the brittle floor, a tangle of limbs and fabric in a ring of flames. Raven bounds to her, panic rich in her mind, and kneels to help her with frantic hands.

"Irene! You've got to get up!" The girl lifts her head slightly, tears lighting her frosted eyes in sharp hues of orange and yellow.

"Raven? What's happening?" There is a helplessness in her tone. She tries to stand, failing when her legs refuse to stiffen.

"They torched the house. Come on, we need to get out of here!" She yells, her voice trying to overcome the incessant roar of the beast.

"I-I can't stand! My legs—"

"Nevermind it!" In one fluid motion, Raven scooped the girl in her arms and made a mad dash for the window. Irene gasped and clung to the shifter's neck, clenching her eyes closed and nearly crying out.

_Get out get out Hot too hot hurts—_

Three steps from the window. A beam gives out, crashing against the burning floor and shattering two inches behind her heel. Pain slices through her legs.

_Keep going Got to get out Get out So close—_

She leaps—The glass pane explodes around them like a thin wall of ice. A black tail whips out after them, a wing of smoke chewing on their ankles. They fall. Two stories, 25 feet, 20 feet, 13 feet, 7 feet, 2 feet—

The ground is cold and hard and unwelcoming. Raven clutches Irene close, a protective shell of flesh, and meets the compact dirt with the force of a battering ram. She halts her violent roll and forces her legs abruptly erect, shaking and weak, and sprints for escape. Raven grinds her teeth to stop from screaming.

_No no no no make it Run Faster __**Faster!**_

Beneath the house, the beast finds the kerosene tanks and devours them with a selfish greed.

_Too close-! _

The explosion is blinding; raw white light spills from every crack and crevice in the failing structure, the force of a ripping tidal wave of sound barreling from its jowls. The gail winds slam into Raven's back like a speeding train, sweeping her legs from under her and throwing her to the ground. Heat swallows her shoulders and with an insatiable hunger consumed the flesh there ravenously. She gasps for the breath that will not come and for a single moment she is blind with agony.

"_**RAVEN**__!" _The woman's cry is enough to pull the shifter back from the precipice of merciful sleep. Just long enough to hear the beast's inescapable drone, and to witness the burning oblivion gorge itself on the treescape behind. Still it pursued them—How do you kill something that feeds on death and destruction?

She screams at her legs to support her. They comply, if for only for a handful of moments. All around them the blaze extends its fiery reach—It was not picky in choosing its prey. The trees sang their cursed song and surrendered, leaves burnt into ash—Everything it touched was reborn into something dark and angry and ugly.

_**Run—**_

Suddenly, the earth falls out in front of them and cuts them from freedom. A waterfall, baring a drop no less than 60 feet_—Would Irene survive a fall like this? She can't swim. She can't see. If I pass out she'll drown within seconds—_

No.

It meant Raven would have to stay conscious long enough to drag both of them to shore. Fine. She is strong and full of pride. She knew her place in this world; she was Irene's rock, her protection and her shell. Her gun.

A deep breath, a step back. A thought (fleeting regret), a silent apology. She hesitates—

"Just jump."

She gasps, looks down at the blind woman. The precognitive smiles mysteriously.

"Jump. We'll be okay. Just jump."

An incredulous gaze from the shifter. A brief question and understanding. There is a deathly fear that bolts her feet to the hot soil as her back burns in the charred air.

"Just do it." She clings closer, hugging the metamorph's neck in a steel grip, and echoes the command close to her ear. "Just do it!"

_Do it. _

The rush is nothing either of them had ever experienced before. The racing of cool air, pushing their innards deep into their throats. The sensation of blistering heat, warmth, chilled unfriendliness, bitter frost, and overwhelming freeze. They hit the water as if its surface were a slab of concrete; Raven gasps as a train barrels into her for a second time and sucks the breath from her lungs. The icy current seizes her limbs, trying to pry Irene from her resilient grasp, to drag them both into its freezing depths to die. The temperature change nearly sends the mutants into shock, forcing them to dance at the edge merciful unconsciousness—

_We'll be okay. Just do it. _

Raven clenches her fists as her tawny eyes snap open, a torrent of bubbles exploding from her mouth. _Wake up—_

It takes every ounces of her to join her legs together, every fiber of her screaming mind and body to form one massive fin at her feet. With the last ounce of will she had, she commanded the makeshift tail to swim, to push them from their graves—

_Do it. Just do it. _

Her legs, bruised, bleeding, and aching, comply only for the second it takes for them to rocket to the surface. The momentum sends them shooting into the air at a slight angle; the propulsion sends them crashing into the shoreline.

The torturous stress on her muscles finally wins over and Irene is peeled from her limp grasp. The precognitive rolls when she hits the thinly grassed bank, spreading the impact throughout her thin frame inadvertently.

Something loud and agonizing snaps within Raven as she collides with a sickening blunt thud, forcing a cry from her tattered throat. It was the last her drained body could take—

_Are …you alright? Irene—I cannot… rest …until I know …you're… okay…_

A gentle brush of a hand rests against either cheek and gingerly pulls the injured woman into safe arms.

A sad, mysterious smile hovers…

And Raven is finally allowed to sleep; the last sensation she feels being an exorable, pitiless hatred that burns as hot as the fire.


End file.
